


2578 years of marriage - And I still hate your guts

by Rae_Saxon



Series: The only thing I hate more than you are ducks [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Domestic Fluff, Enemies to "Oh yeah that's why we married", F/M, Or at least that's what I tell myself as I slowly realise that no one finds me funny, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:42:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 21,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22588096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rae_Saxon/pseuds/Rae_Saxon
Summary: The Doctor and the Master accidentally end up on a planet that is very concerned about keeping its peace - And end up on trial. Which ends with them forced to live as the married couple they never got to be on Gallifrey. In peace. Which totally works out. Because they never fight. At all. Ever.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Series: The only thing I hate more than you are ducks [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1826344
Comments: 338
Kudos: 1017





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sacha Dhawan stated in his interview in DWM that the Master is broken and will never, ever be healed. I took that as a challenge to write angst-less, funny Doctor/Master fluff so here it is. The "Oops, married" story everyone has been waiting for.

“Okay,” she growled reluctantly, after seriously re-assessing her situation. “We gotta work together on this.”

The Master gave her a mildly amused grin. She couldn't see it, while being tied to his back with firm ropes, but she knew it was there nonetheless.

She could hear it in his voice.

“Came to that conclusion, did you? All by yourself?”

The Doctor figured he was probably alluding to the fact that he had told her so several hours before, when she had agreed, then pushed him down a low hill and ran away, while shouting “The troublemaker! I found him! The troublemaker is falling down that hill!” all over the little, peace-loving village.

She wasn't entirely to blame, really.

“They expect us to stop fighting.”

“Don't you say.”

“So maybe it's best if you drop the sarcasm.”

The Master snorted.

“I told you this is a peaceful planet that punishes any kinds of fights with harsh penalties, did I not? I told you, let's not do this here, and what did you do, exactly, Doctor?”

“Excuse me,” she hissed back, shifting uncomfortably in their restraints to turn her head towards him. It forced him to go along with her movement and she grinned as she saw him struggling to still sit upright. “Are you blaming me for not believing you? When have you ever told me the truth, huh? Plus. Peaceful planets without any trouble allowed ever.... Thought they were a myth. In all my life, I've never seen a purely peaceful planet. The last one was destroyed by you.”

The Master giggled.

“That _was_ fun.”

“No, it was not,” the Doctor sighed. “But that's not the point. The point is. We're going to have to... stop fighting.”

“Oh golly,” the Master announced, attempting a shrug, but giving up on that again quickly, as he remembered he was tied up and the Doctor started swinging with his movements behind him. “Is that how it's done? After centuries of battling each other, we just decide to stop? Oh, if only I'd known.”

The Doctor rolled her eyes.

“Here he is, the picture of innocence, pretending I was the one looking for fights even once.”

“The Death Zone,” the Master called back loudly. “I came in...”  
  
“Oh my God,” the Doctor talked over him. “Not that again, it's been half a millennium, let it go.”

“I came in,” the Master repeated even louder. “To save you! And you stole my official seal, drove past me, stole my teleport, left me to die with the Cybermen and _punched_ me!”

“Okay, once then,” the Doctor shouted. “I was looking for a fight once! And I did _not_ punch you.... then. What about all the times you tried to kill me? Care to have a count? We'll be quite busy, but it doesn't seem like we'll have anything better to do anytime soon!”

“I hardly think this is going to be very product...-”

“It all started on Gallifrey,” the Doctor announced. “When you set my house on fire.”

“I didn't like your new curtains,” the Master mumbled.

“You tried to choke me to death with a phone cable...”

“You pushed me into a black hole!” he shouted.

The Doctor pretended she hadn't heard him.

“Tried to summon a powerful alien and sacrifice me and my friend...”

“You trapped me in a time loop!”

“Pushed me off a radio tower and laughed when I regenerated....”

“You let me burn to death on Sarn!”

They both turned their heads as far as they could, and their glances met.

“Okay,” the Doctor finally sighed. “It's true. I'm not proud of that one.”

“We gotta get out of here, Doctor,” the Master sighed, his body sinking together slightly behind her. She could feel his shoulders loosen and bit her lower lip worriedly.

“I know. But they said we're not getting our trial before we've... made peace. So. We gotta stop blaming ourselves for the last 2000 years and come up with some uhm... friendshippy feelings here.”

The Master's nose scrunched in apparent effort.

“You're... errrr... smart?”

“So are you,” the Doctor sighed. “Well done. Anything else you don't hate about me?”

She didn't catch the Master's very quick, and very telling side glance towards her general direction.

“Well, you're... f....” he stopped himself, staring at the floor darkly.

She turned her head back to him, rolling her eyes.

“You really can't say it? Just say I'm funny. What about it?”

“I don't _like_ you,” he spit back. “Giving you compliments isn't exactly prime entertainment for me.”

She sighed once again and mumbled something that sounded like “toxic arch-enmity”.

“Fine then,” she finally said out loud. “I do like you. I think you're brilliant and you can be hilarious, which is not news to me, because you were always making me laugh in the middle of lessons, back when we were kids. You're adventurous and fearless and oozing charm. You went the wrong path and I will never condone that, but you've... you've been my best friend. I've not forgotten that.”

There was a little silence following after that. The Master did not move, it was as if he had been frozen in place.

“There,” the Doctor added, quietly, after a while of waiting for him to react. “Wasn't that difficult. Your turn.”

“I think you're annoying,” the Master growled. “Utterly obnoxious. Arrogant and condescending, while pretending to be above that kind of notion, while pretending to be a saint. Careless, while pretending to care. A hypocrite in absolutely everything you do.” He stopped, and the Doctor, frowning deeply, opened her mouth to explain that his had very much not been the task, when he suddenly went on. “But you're _my_ obnoxious, arrogant, careless hypocrite and no matter how often I begged the universe, threatened the universe to let it be enough to hate you, it's not. So there. Oh, and you're _funny_. Happy now?”

The Doctor considered that quietly.

“I think that was too much of a backhanded compliment for me to be able to tell,” she finally replied, with genuine confusion in her voice and the Master snorted, a hoarse laugh spilling from his lips.

That's when the doors opened.

“We have sensed more peaceful vibrations around you two now,” one of the aliens said, the lightness in his voice making his words sound like a song. “We can now begin the trial.”

They took a deep breath, exchanging a relieved look. At least, this odyssey was finally going to end now. Trials were good. She could do trials. Both of them knew how to talk themselves out of tricky situations. It was going to be fine now.

Nothing was going to be fine.

This was, quite frankly, quickly turning into a disaster.

All of the weird, duck-like faces were looking down on them listlessly, as they were standing in the middle of the little room, trying to defend themselves. Their beaks were trembling in obvious discomfort whenever their voices got louder or one of them interrupted the other – The Doctor had never seen a species quite as addicted to harmony as they seemed to be.

At least they had freed them of their restraints. Relieved to finally be able to move again, the Doctor wandered up and down the whole room several times.

“We have acquired your files from Gallifrey,” the alien that apparently was their judge, announced to the room.

“What?” the Master asked, in the same moment as the Doctor called, “Files? What files?”.

The alien ignored them both.

“Your government seemed very eager to give you two the help you so desperately need.”

“They have files of us?” the Master picked up on it in the same moment, the Doctor muttered “Of course they were, they always hated our guts,” under her breath.

Disapproving looks hit her, as some aliens in the crowd started shuddering.

“Sorry,” she added louder. “Sorry. I meant to say... they always... err... were a bit disappointed in us.”

The Master gave her a look that clearly said “Understatement of the year” but she shrugged – She simply wanted this to be over with as soon as possible.

On the judge's huge, bald forehead appeared a frown.

“This clearly states that the two of you are married.”

Shocked silence followed.

“What?” the Master finally sputtered, while the Doctor raised her hands, shaking her head hastily. “No, no, no, this is a mistake...”

The alien looked up at them with inquiring look on his face.

“Your names are the Doctor and the Master, no?”

They exchanged horrified glances.

“Well... yes,” the Doctor finally conceded, when she realised the Master was in too much of a shock to speak. “But... you see... we were married once. For... a week or something. Can't have been long.” She gave a nervous laugh as she walked up to him. “That was around two thousand years ago. He's tried to ki...- Tickle me five hundred times since. At least.”

“These files do not list a divorce.” The judge was staring at them with unblinking eyes. “You have been married for 2578 years.”

The Doctor and the Master exchanged another gaze. His brown eyes, usually full of contempt, were very clearly calling for help now.

“Yes. No. Not officially divorced, but you see...” another nervous laugh slipped out. “There have been several murder attempts by my... my... ex husband since. Some of them successful, even. I would say, that counts as a divorce, doesn't it?”

“It says here instead of dying, Time Lords regenerate. Is it customary for your people to consider yourselves divorced after having died?” the alien looked interested and the Doctor realised they had no such concepts as “murder attempts” on their planet.

“Well, no, but...”

“Then there has been no divorce. You are married.”

“But...” the Master now called out, only to be interrupted.

“Marriage is a sacred bond of love. Therefore, the world of Fried'en will serve as your marriage counsellor until peace and tranquillity of your bond has been restored again. You shall live in our village together, your hostility levels closely monitored.”

And with that, two people were stepping towards them, attaching two white wristbands on their arms that snapped closed with a horribly resounding clicking sound, faster than they could even react. The Doctor reached for her sonic screwdriver, but she didn't have it on her anymore. The Master was looking from his own wristband to her, eyes wide in terror.

“These will glare red if there is any level of hostility between you two,” the judge explained casually. “We'll be informed whenever this happens. You'll have a counsellor to talk to you once a week. We have put up containment fields around the village that make it impossible for you to leave, for as long as you're wearing these bracelets. You will not be able to take them off, until we decide our work is done and peace restored.”

“We'll see about that,” the Master growled under his breath, but no one but the Doctor heard him.

With heavy hearts, they were led out of the court room, into the aisles leading back out to the village.

One of the Friedianers, who had sat in the crowd stepped towards them. The Doctor could tell from the sound of her singing voice, that she was a female.

“I am Kristiane,” she greeted them cheerfully. “Your new marriage counsellor. I'll show you where you will live. Follow me.”


	2. Chapter 2

“So,” the Doctor announced into the silent room, turning around herself, as she scanned the walls for possible doors she could've over-looked. “All we have to do is keeping the peace up for a few days, and they'll let us go... surely?”

The Master was still staring at the single king-sized bed in their single bedroom, not a word leaving his trembling lips.

“We can do that, I reckon. We'll simply... avoid each other. Read a lot of books. In different corners of the house.”

She was trying to sound optimistic, but the scorching look on the Master's face told her that her optimism wasn't appreciated right now.

“Great,” he finally roared. “You take the sofa, then. To keep up the _peace_.”

“Me?” the Doctor shot back, turning towards him swiftly. “ _Me_? It's your fault we're in this mess in the first place!”

“I told you not to fight here, didn't I? I told you to listen to me and...-”

“ _You_ wouldn't sign the divorce papers!”

“That was over 2000 years ago!” he shouted back. “Sorry, should I have foreseen this exact situation?”

Her eyes flitted down to the Master's wrist band, which, just like her own, had turned to a glaring red colour.

“You could've just signed them,” she brought out through her gritted teeth, currently drawn into a sugary-sweet, fake smile.

The Master rolled his eyes.

“Believe me, I wish I had. Don't know what I thought back then, wanting to be married to _you_.”

“Likewise,” she spit, now every pretence falling from her face, as she let herself sink down onto the mattress. “And I'm taking the bed.”

“You are not!” the called, trying to get a space on the bed, but before he had even reached the mattress, the Doctor had spread out on it, her arms and legs angled widely.

“All mine,” she called and he watched her with apparent rage, then simply laid down and laid his legs onto her stomach.

“Great pillows they have here,” he announced loudly and the Doctor pulled a grimace, trying to push his feet off her, but he kept them vehemently stiff, his toes digging into the hem of her shirt so they wouldn't slide down.

“Stop that,” she called, “you're going to stretch it out!”

“Doesn't matter, does it?” he grinned evilly. “I've been in your wardrobe, I know that somewhere in the depths of your joke of a TARDIS, you have a whole shelf full with rainbow shirts.”

“Does not mean you have to ruin this one,” she growled, now trying to pull at his feet to get him to slide off the bed. “It's my favourite colour!”

“Bullshit,” the Master replied with a roll of his eyes, stomping his legs against her pull. “Your favourite is the blue one. Hey, stop that. _Stop_.”

She had grabbed his leg and pushed him off the bed, but his leg, still caught up in her shirt, tore it off her chest, as he fell to the ground with a dull sound.

Shocked, the Doctor looked down at herself, and the Master, pulling the rainbow shreds from his puzzled face, raised and eyebrow from below.

“No bra, huh?”

“Shut up,” the Doctor hissed, and the Master chuckled, clearly glad to have regained the upper hand.

“No really, Doctor, I applaud your choice to stand up against the suppression of woman by resisting to close away your breasts, however...”

“Shut _up_ , Master, can't you hear that?”

He stopped and frowned, propping himself up on his elbows to listen. There was an alarm, somewhere in the distance, that resounded in tact with the red warning lights that were now blinking on and off on their wrists.

Oh, damn it.

“Quick, get up, get up, maybe we can pretend...”

She heard the distant sound of what she assumed was the door bell. With a heavy sigh, the Doctor hastily helped the Master to his feet, then raced off to open the door.

“Hey,” he called after her, quickly following her out. “Doctor, wait, wai-”

But she had already opened the door and with a low growl coming from somewhere in his throat, he had grabbed her, pushed her behind him and given her his own shirt with a stare of utter disbelief.

She pulled it over, trying to keep up the appearance of a woman who absolutely had not forgotten about not wearing a shirt.

Judgemental looks of the “I am not angry, just disappointed” sort hit them both as she stepped forwards again, smiling sheepishly.

“We have registered physical violence in your house hold.”

They exchanged a look.

“See?” the Master finally asked with a crooked smile. “That's why you shouldn't lock us up together. Doesn't end well. For me. I was the one attacked. She's the violent one. Lock _her_ up.”

The Doctor shot him a dark glare.

“That's rich, coming from you. Just look up “The Master” in _any_ database and you'll see who's the violent one of the two of us.”

The Friedianers looked utterly unimpressed.

“You will both cease the violence or you will _both_ be restrained. This is a planet of harmony and your behaviour is disrupting your neighbour's peace. There have already been complaints.”

The Master, his mouth already opened to say something, stopped himself. He stared at the Friedianers, then turned towards the Doctor, mouthing “Restrained?”.

She bit her lower lip grumpily, then resigned herself to her fate and nodded.

“We understand. We'll stop fighting now. Thank you for your warning.”

The aliens still regarded them with suspiciously narrowed eyes, but they finally walked off, leaving them alone again. As soon as the Doctor had let the door fall shut behind them, the Master repeated his question out loud, “Restrained? They want to _restrain_ us? Are they insane? As if this isn't bad enough! Deprivation of freedom, it's what they're doing, that can hardly be considered peaceful!”

“Bloody neighbour,” the Doctor growled. “Complaining already? We have just moved in! For all they know, we could've... could've... put up shelves or something!”

They exchanged looks and she could see her own feelings of being lost in his eyes. Here they were, yet again stuck together on a planet they didn't belong on. It was Gallifrey all over again, only more strange, with less chances of escape.

“I'll take the sofa,” the Doctor sighed, suddenly feeling very tired.

“Can't,” the Master muttered sheepishly. “Only one blanket.”

“Okay, well then. I guess we... share?”

They stood there, just for a moment, both contemplating their future with dread in their hearts. Finally, the Master shrugged, and without another word, he walked back into the bedroom.

“I'll take the right side,” he called out from inside. “Can't sleep left.”

“Yeah,” the Doctor muttered, so quietly that he couldn't hear it. “I know.”

They laid as far apart as bed and blanket allowed them to. The Master was soon snoring peacefully and she smiled as she remembered his ability to fall asleep when- and where ever he wanted to. It had always worked out that way for him.

Ironically, she had only ever been able to sleep where he had been.

Funny, how much time could change. Here she lay, utterly unable to sleep, still wearing his shirt, as they had both forgotten about it, and it was weirdly comforting. In this strange world they were now stuck in under threat, she yet again remembered how it was when the only familiar thing around her was him.

She curled up, watching him quietly as he slept, the rage and tension slowly lifting from his face, leaving him looking almost boy-like and so... at peace?

God, she was beginning to hate the word peace.

She shifted only a little closer, so close she would still be able to let it pass as something that had happened in their sleep, and closed her eyes, simply listening to his breathing, feeling it on her cheeks incredibly lightly, and after a while, sleep finally rolled over her.

When the Doctor woke up the next morning, she was completely groggy.

“Five more minutes...” she mumbled at the annoying presence hanging over her, pulling at her hair gently.

“You said that ten minutes ago.”

“I didn't mean it. I mean it now,” she promised into her pillow, which she pulled demonstratively closer to her face, just to make a point.

The Master grabbed it and threw it across the room.

“Hey!” the Doctor called, after her chin had crashed onto the mattress. “Give that back to me.”

“Come on,” the Master demanded with a roll of his eyes. “I made you pancakes and some tea. Should've really gone for coffee, from the looks of it, though.” He grinned, as she sat up, trying to stroke hair out of her face, only to find that her hair was sticking to her cheek from sweat.

“Is there syrup?” she groaned and he laughed.

“Yes, yes, more than enough syrup to drown your poor, innocent pancakes in, as I know you will. Now get up and get a shower, you stink and our counsellor is coming for a nice little chat in about an hour.”

Oh great, the Doctor thought. What a lovely prospect.

From the look of her face, Kristiane didn't feel any more delighted at meeting them than they were.

She had greeted them with a rather reserved look on her face and than sat down opposite from them at their kitchen table. Before they had exchanged a single word, she was already scribbling down something onto her important looking clipboard and the Doctor noticed her eyes flitting to their wristbands, which, thank Rassilon, had gone back to white.

“So...” she finally spoke. “I heard there had been an incident last night. Let's talk about it.”

They exchanged looks.

“Doesn't this sort of thing usually... start with... background information... history... that sort of thing?” the Master brought up with hopeful tone. “We could tell you about our... relationship and you'll realise our marriage is definitely not a factor anymore and we get to go home?”

Kristiane raised an eyebrow.

“So you'd prefer talking about your marriage?”

“Yes,” the Master said with an eager nod.

“No,” the Doctor said in the exact same moment, mortified.

“What?” the Master asked, looking at her with a puzzled expression?

“What?” the Doctor asked in the exact same moment, still mortified.

“Interesting,” Kristiane commented, writing down something else on her clipboard.

“No, not interesting!” the Doctor called out. “We married over 2000 years ago. It's over. It was long over. We don't get along. We won't ever get along. It's not relevant, I.... Please?”

She stopped, her voice fading into nothing, as Kristiane kept on writing completely unperturbed.

“Would you agree that your marriage is irrelevant, Master?” she finally asked, catching him off guard.

“No. What. Wait. Yes. Yes, absolutely.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“You don't seem sure.”

“No,” the Master agreed, then shook his head. “I mean, I am. Sure. She's.... a pain in the ass.”

Kristiane winced and the Doctor raised a hand to her forehead, shaking her head softly.

“Sorry,” she sighed. “He didn't mean it like that.”

“Yes, he did,” the Master growled. “And you don't speak for me.”

She gave him a look, very clearly signalling him to stop fighting in front of their counsellor, but he just glared back at her with fire raging in his dark eyes.

“That's quite alright,” Kristiane assured them. “Doctor, are you annoyed by your husband's resentment towards you?”

It was the Doctor's turn to be caught off guard now. Her head shot back around to Kristiane and she frowned.

“Well, yes, I mean... it's utterly inappropriate at the moment. “She brought out with a side glare towards him. “We clearly have to get along to get out of here.”

Kristiane smirked. “So you just want to ignore your problems rather than address and work through them, and then continue to blame them on him. Interesting.”

“She's like that all the time,” the Master suddenly threw in with a theatrical wave of his hand, having leant back in his chair with a cheeky grin towards her.

“We don't have _problems_ ,” she reminded both parties in the room with barely contained irritation. “We are enemies. He's trying to spite me at every turn, he's tried to kill me, for God's sake!”

“Have you ever considered that his resentment towards you comes from the fact that you view your marriage as irrelevant, while he's apparently still unsure about his feelings for you?”

“He... I... what?” the Doctor spluttered, laughing now, then winced, as she heard the clunk of the Master's chair next to her.

He had gotten up, kicked it to the ground, and stormed back into their bedroom, letting the door fall shut behind them.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm never running out of tropes.

“You know,” she sighed as she entered their bedroom, after having given the Master some hours to cool down. “I think running away from our marriage counselling is not getting us off here any time sooner.”

He was lying on the bed, blanket pulled halfway over his face, and very, very clearly sulking.

“I want a new counsellor,” came the dull reply from under the covers.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow.

“You've talked to her for ten minutes.”

“And I decided I hate her. She doesn't listen at all. We're arch enemies. I resent you. For many reasons. None of them...” He waved his hands, without looking at her, apparently unable to even repeat Kristiane's words. “None of them _that_.”

She sat down on the mattress next to him, leaning back with her arms crossed.

“Tell me, then.”

His face came out from under the blanket, staring at her blankly.

“Isn't that contra-productive?” he finally asked and she shrugged.

“Well, she was right with what she said about me. If I keep on ignoring these issues, that won't make them go away, it'll just make them worse. So. I'm here. Listening to your issues. Lay it on me.”

The Master suddenly sat up, on his knees, grinning at her broadly.

“Alphabetical or chronological? You know what, don't answer that, doesn't matter, I'll just tell you as it comes! Ohhh, golly, where do I start?”

The Doctor froze, watching the joy on his face explode, and wondered in silent despair if she had made a mistake. She was sure she had seen that expression on him before. It was the face he made before blowing planets up.

“One - You're annoying. No really, no, no, no...” He raised his finger at her as she was trying to interrupt him, “you said you'd listen.”

“As long as you take it seriously,” the Doctor replied with indignant tone, but he just shook his head.

“I am! You _are_ annoying!”

“I am not...”

“Yes, you are. You always talk. You always think what you have to say is more important, even if you're just babbling. God, your continuing babbling. Even during sex, you....”

“Okay no,” the Doctor interrupted him firmly. “We are not talking sex here.”

“Of course not,” the Master replied with a crooked grin. “Because you're _good_ at that.”

“That's not relevant!” she squeaked, her voice only a tiny little bit too high. “We're talking character traits, _only_.”

The Master rolled his eyes.

“Fine then. Two - Humans. What the hell is it about them you like so much? Has anyone ever told you how ridiculous it makes you look, constantly surrounding yourself with them? Oh, that's right, I have. About a million times.”

With a last annoyed glare, she pulled the blanket back over his face and got up.

“Fine then,” she hissed while pulling the door back shut behind her. “Come to talk to me if you find a _serious_ reason.”

“I am serious!” he repeated, calling out to the shut door as she left to return to her book and the very comfy, very desolate sofa in the living room.

“You're a hypocrite,” the Master casually announced two hours later, as he came out of the bedroom to pour himself some orange juice.

The Doctor, now on her second book, laid it down with a roll of her eyes.

“You are,” he nodded, taking a long sip. “You keep on trying to force your views onto everyone and if they don't live up to your standards, you toss them aside. And you're far from perfect, yourself, you know?”

“I do,” the Doctor replied, raising her book again, trying to seem unimpressed. “Never pretended to be. I make mistakes, but I try my best to fix them, try my best to learn from them.”

The Master shrugged.

“Well, you suck at it. Hey! Know what? I think that's _another_ point!”

“You're so boring though, aren't you?” the Master yawned as the evening dawned, his legs dangling from the sofa they were lying on, his back rested against the Doctor's knees. “You used to be fun, back when we were kids, when you were still up for trouble and adventures, but now....” He yawned again, demonstratively. “Now everything needs to be good. Everything needs to be _kind_.”

“Kindness is not boring,” said the Doctor, not even looking up from her book. She was still on the first few forty pages. He had not let her read much.

“No, of course not,” he replied, sarcasm dropping from his words. “Kindness is right. Kindness is perfect. Pulling pranks is something only baddies do. Running around saving poor, poor humans, that's the true definition of fun.”

“I expect you call what you're doing 'pranks', then?” the Doctor asked, an eyebrow raised in obvious judgement.

The Master grinned.

“Nah. But I'd definitely call it _fun_.”

“Point 346,” he grinned, a tooth brush in his hands and a bit of tooth paste dripping on the floor. “Or was it 364? I'm honestly not sure...”

“Just get to it, already.” She spit out some tooth paste into the sink, rolling her eyes heavily. “What is it this time?”

He threw a very obvious look to the pyjamas she had picked from the back of the closet. It had teddy bears stitched over every free piece of fabric, covered in soft, artificial fur.

“Your fashion sense,” he added unnecessarily. “Atrocious.”

“Well, this isn't exactly my first choice, myself,” the Doctor replied grumpily, tucking away her tooth brush, while subconsciously stroking one of the teddies reassuringly.

The Master watched her with open judgement written all over his face.

“Yes,” he finally replied. “It was. And the things you have in your TARDIS aren't much better, either. Do I have to remind you of your sixth self?”

“Do I have to remind you of your Traken self, covered in velvet, puffy shoulders and all?” she shot back and the Master grinned.

“You were totally into that.”

“I was _so_ not!” she replied, her mouth torn open to signal absolute indignation. “I was very much against your whole incarnation back then! Stealing my friend's father's body, what did you _think_?”

“Which leads me straight back to my point about you being a hypocrite,” the Master replied, still wearing that obnoxious grin of his. “Because you were totally into it. I saw your looks.”

“You did not see my looks,” the Doctor replied, turning off the bathroom lights on her way out, even though the Master was still inside. “Otherwise we'd have had sex for a week.”

“So you admit there were looks,” he laughed, stepping out into the darkness behind her, then frowning. With a disgusted look in his face, he raised his bare foot, only to realise he'd stepped into the tooth paste he had dropped earlier.

The Doctor giggled.

“Yeah. You're really sexy.”

The Master's wristband turned almost as red as his head.

It was just another night of lying as far away as possible from the Master and pretending that she didn't wish they were closer.

There must be something in the air here, she thought, that makes him seem less annoying in the dark.

He simply lay there, quietly, and she knew he wasn't asleep yet, just as she knew that he knew that she wasn't.

None of them spoke, for an hour, for two hours, and silently, she wondered what he was thinking of, what he dreamed of in these moments before sleep rolled over him and the subconscious took over. Was he making up little dream scenarios like she did, full of happiness that real life didn't offer him, or was he simply lying there, imagining planets burning to ashes?

It was hard to tell, with him. She wondered if it'd be worth the bickering to simply ask, but just as she opened her mouth to do so, thinking that otherwise she'd might die of boredom, he had already spoken.

“You left me,” he said, his voice oddly clear in the darkness. “You told me you'd love me forever and then you left.”

The Doctor froze, right there, next to him, and it was as if someone had left a whole brick wall to crash down between them, catching her completely off guard. She was still frozen when he turned around a few minutes later, apparently giving up on getting an answer.

She was only snatching out of her paralysis when she heard the almost comforting sound of his even breathing, telling her he had fallen asleep.

Reason 365, she thought. And he had finally gotten to the point.

“Come on, sleepyhead, time to wake up!”

She really gave it her best to appear fresh, fit and in a good mood, but distantly, she wondered why she even bothered. It took the Master one look onto her face to catch on to the fact that she hadn't slept all night.

He sniffed the air exactly once.

“What... what did you... oh no.”

“I made pancakes,” she announced with a broad grin.

“No, no, no, oh God, why.”

He almost fell out of the bed, his feet still uncoordinated and half-asleep, and the Doctor thought he looked cute, honestly, as he stumbled out of the room, pulling their blanket behind him a few steps, his hair all tousled up and sleep still sticking to his face.

There was a certain panic in his voice when he spoke again.

“Doctor, what have you done?”

“Pancakes,” she repeated, looking puzzled as she stepped back into the kitchen behind him. “See?”

The Doctor pointed at a plate, where... _something_ was stapling, and her smile died on her face. Come to think of it, when the Master had made pancakes the other day, they hadn't been quite as... well... black.

“I burnt them, didn't I?” she muttered, then threw her head back in annoyance. “Ohhhhh no. I did it again, I'm just no good with the right timing, maybe if I practice more...”

“Absolutely not,” the Master interrupted her hastily, but she could hear a little laugh in his voice. “No way. I do the cooking. You do the...” He stopped, looking for words with a look of despair on his face. “Well, the... communication part. Today. Village exploring. I think we're in need of some shopping. You ruined our last eggs.”

She sighed.

“I... I made us some bread, too, it's in the...”

There was smoke coming out of the oven just as she had spoken and the hopeful look on the Doctor's face died quickly.

With an exasperated groan, the Master turned off the oven and salvaged it before it caught serious fire.

“Sorry,” the Doctor muttered, looking crestfallen. “I suppose it's just another point on your list?”

But to her surprise, the Master simply stood back up, waved smoke out of their faces, and gave her a little kiss onto her forehead.

“No,” he sighed. “That's just one on the long, long list of things that make you you. I'm going to take a shower. _Don't_ touch anything.”

The Doctor found her grin back, letting it follow him all the way to the bathroom.

“Ohhh, so there are more lists, are there? Do you have one full with reasons for why you love me, too?”

“It's very short,” he called back to her through the closed bathroom door. “And your cooking is definitely not on it.”

“I want to see it!” she shouted, not letting the sound of a steady water stream stop her.

The Master just chuckled and she could hear the sound echo from the walls.

“Come on, there must've been some reason for you deciding you'd marry me, back then!”

That's when he opened the bathroom door, just a tiny bit, just enough for his wet head and chest to poke through, and she jumped back in surprise, her eyes suddenly refusing to move away from him.

He commented her stare with a crooked little grin, far too smug for her liking, but exactly smug enough for her eyes to get drawn to it next.

“If you're nice, maybe I'll tell you, one day.”

“I could tell you why I decided to marry you. I think that's very good trading grounds.”

But the Master just laughed.

“Because I'm the best thing that's ever happened to you, that's why.”

And with that he closed the bathroom door again, leaving nothing but a little puddle to the Doctor's feet and a distant feeling of wishing she was on the other side of it with him.


	4. Chapter 4

When Kristiane came in the next day, they were prepared to sit it through. The Doctor was sitting on her hands, humming a little song in her head, while the Master looked stoically ahead, his teeth gritted together.

“So have you two... talked?” she wanted to know, her clipboard of doom resting on her lap again.

“I have given her an elaborate list,” the Master announced with a crooked grin.

“A list?” Kristiane asked, raising her eyebrow slightly as she made a note on her board.

“Of all the reasons I _truly_ resent her for,” the Master replied, still grinning.

Kristiane gulped, before turning to the Doctor.

“And you were... alright with that?”

“I encouraged it,” the Doctor confirmed with an earnest nod.

Kristiane stared silently, apparently rendered speechless for quite a while.

“Well that seems... a rather aggressive method,” she finally concluded tentatively. “Does hurting your wife make you feel better?”

The smug little grin the Master had shown, died instantly, and his face fell. The Doctor watched, cautiously biting her lower lip in worry. He always got a bit cranky when he was getting analysed.

People died when he got cranky.

“It does.”

Kristiane noted down something else on her clipboard.

“Yes?” she finally asked. “And for how long?”

Rage started spreading on the Master's face, but their counsellor seemed perfectly oblivious to the danger she was in, looking into his eyes completely unbothered, waiting for her answer.

“Forever,” he finally brought out through gritted teeth.

She finally seemed to have registered the tone of his voice, because when she spoke again, she had turned to the Doctor instead, apparently deciding it was safer to even out the vulnerability levels in the room.

“What about you?” she asked her. “Do you feel better when he hurts you?”

The Doctor, caught off guard by that, heard the little “yes” escaping her before she could stop to think about it. The look on the Master's face as he abruptly turned his head to her, mirrored her own surprise.

“I see,” Kristiane nodded, adding more to her quite elaborate list of their dysfunctionalities. “So you feel like you deserve to be punished by him? What for?”

“I...uhm...” she spluttered, a suppressed laugh making her voice quiver. “I suppose I am.... annoying. And uhm... talk a lot. And...”

The Master snorted and she couldn't help it, the sound simply kicked her into her own fit of giggles.

Kristiane commented their lack of seriousness by also raising her second eyebrow.

“Let's try something else, then,” she suggested while taking more notes, her rather kind smile suddenly seeming very frozen. “Why don't both of you tell me the main reason for why you consider your marriage to have failed?”

They raised their hands in the exact same moment, both not needing a second to think about this one, their fingers pointed at each other.

“He turned into a murderous super villain!”

“She turned into a sanctimonious prick!”

A tiny, little exasperated sigh escaped Kristiane, unheard by both Time Lords, who were far too caught up in angrily insulting each other now to even remember anyone else was in the room.

The village was a quiet little place. The Doctor reckoned she would've liked it, under different circumstances that had more to do with a swift little visit and less to do with being imprisoned with a little piece of work.

It was very obvious that everyone here knew each other and everyone considered them a disruption of their harmonious lives – Gazes were following them wherever they went, as they picked up clothes, groceries, books and movies, both slowly coming to terms with the reality of their situation and realising that they were not coming out of here anytime soon.

They were on the way home, carrying several bags with them, panting quietly, when the Master gently nudged her in the side with his elbow.

“That bloody duck over there,” he murmured, “that's the neighbour who complained about us.”

“How do you know that?” she whispered back, giving the woman, who was currently feeding fish in a pond some breadcrumbs, an inquiring look.

When she looked back at the Master, he had his eyes narrowed at the lady, staring intently.

“Ohhhh no!” she spit. “No, no, no, _no!_ You will _not_ shrink our neighbour! We will never get away from here, Master!”

“She complained about us!” he shouted back. “And if she's very little... no one will hear her complaints anymore!”

“Master, no!”

“Doctor, yes!”

To her absolute horror, he pulled out a device from his inner pocket, which she had no problem identifying as a new, makeshift TCE put together with kitchen objects.

“When the _hell_ did you have time to make this?” she asked, trying to grab it, but he was quicker than her, holding it out of her reach with a grin that clearly said “Look, I'm finally taller than you”.

She jumped up, but he pushed her away with his other hand, so she stepped onto the tips of her toes, still trying to reach him, as he kept on pushing her.

“I can be very discreet,” the Master explained, a laugh caught in his voice.

“Give that to me, Master, bloody _hell_!” She crashed against him, trying to wrestle down his arm, but he just laughed some more.

“Oh, oh, oh,” he finally grinned. “Our lovely neighbour has noticed we're fighting. Can I shrink her _now_?”

“What?” the Doctor called, turning her head, the rest of her body frozen mid-movement.

The elderly woman had gotten up from the pond, beak trembling in disapproval as she looked over to them suspiciously.

The Doctor realised how they must look, standing in the middle of the road, bags with shopping sprawled out around them, forgotten, while they were physically assaulting one another.

She reacted instinctively, realising the best form of distraction right now, and let her arms sink down to his head, pulling him into a kiss. 

The Master, caught by surprise, finally let his TCE sink down and wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her closer as he deepened the kiss with a moan.

His lips were soft. Even with the beard slightly scratching her, his lips seemed so much softer than usual, and it didn't take the Doctor long to forget their audience and completely sink into the kiss, only remembering where they were when the Master's hand had wandered underneath her shirt and up, to squeeze her breast.

She moaned, then tore her eyes open, slapping his hand as she backed a step away, turning around.

Their neighbour was walking down the road back to her house, shaking her head as she did.

The Doctor let out a sigh of relief.

“That was close.”

Meanwhile, the Master was looking down at his wristband with a tiny little frown.

“Green?” he asked. “They did not explain green to us.”

The Doctor smiled awkwardly, scratching the back of her head as she spoke.

“Well, don't you think, it's... uhm...”

He looked up at her expectantly.

“... Well, you know. We kissed. They turned green. Might have mistaken the act for love.”

She shrugged, trying to seem like her hearts weren't still racing and her body wasn't screaming at her to get back into his arms and let him explore it a little bit longer.

The Master's face froze.

“Quite,” he finally brought out. “It might have. Let's get home.”

To her relief, he tucked his TCE back into his pocket, then grabbed his bags back up, walking up ahead towards their little house.

The Doctor collected her own bags and stumbled behind, unable to shake the feeling that she had just said something wrong.

“You know,” the Master grinned, as he swung himself onto the kitchen counter, watching her put the groceries into the fridge with a lazy sprawl. “If we'd just pretend to be happily in love, we could totally get off here.”

The Doctor put in some butter, raising an eyebrow into the depths of the fridge – She knew he didn't need to see the gesture to know how she was reacting.

“No one will believe it. We need to convince these wristbands along with them and... I don't know if you noticed... but we don't get along.”

“They're easy to fool,” the Master said. “You said so yourself.”  
  
She raised her hand, showing him hers, which was back to a neutral white.

“It lit up green for as long as we were kissing,” she explained. “But that's it. We'd have to be kissing non-stop to convince anyone we're actually in love.”

“Oh no,” the Master replied dryly. “Wouldn't want that.”

She turned back around, frowning at a glass of apricot jam.

“When did we get that?”

The Master, who had been looking down on his own wristband thoughtfully, looked up with a grin.

“Got that for you, otherwise you'll be whining every morning about how we should've gotten jam,” he replied with a shrug, hiding his arm carefully behind his back, as he slid off the counter and out of the room.

A smirk tugged at the Doctor's lips.

She  _did_ love jam.

“You gotta be kidding me,” the Master said dryly, while the Doctor had disappeared behind a couch cushion to stifle her laughing fit. “This... that... that's not a movie, that's.... what _is_ that, Doctor?”

She put down the pillow, tears of laughter shining in her eyes as she looked at him, trying her best to look serious, while another incoming laughing fit was already making her voice tremble.

“Don't you think this story about the... the duck that... that... likes bread more than sea weed and gets accepted for it... is... exciting?”

She burst out into laughter again and the Master watched her, a look of pure horror on his face, before he joined in, throwing the control at the screen as he did.

“We need to try another.”

“You know they'll all be like this,” she gasped breathlessly. “I already tried their books, Master, we are.... in _so_ much trouble.”

“No!” he winced. “God, what are we going to _do_?”

“I guess we have to write our own stories,” she giggled and he rolled his eyes, laughing still.

“Right and next thing we know is we're in a high security tract for writing down acts of violence.”

The Doctor suddenly sat upright, her eyes wide as she grinned at him.

“Master,” she called, barely holding back more laughter. “Master..... do you think they have porn?”

His eyes widened just like hers, and for a few moments, they simply considered this, staring into each other's faces.

“I can't tell... if I really want to see it... or want to tear my own eyes out from the mere thought of it ever crossing my path,” he announced and the Doctor's whole body shook with laughter.

“This book,” the Master announced that night, as they were lying in bed, his head shaking slightly. “It's just ridiculous. This guy, he...”  
  
The Doctor had just lain there, perfectly content with watching him read quietly, blanket only partially covering his toned, naked chest, but now she interrupted him quickly.

“Don't, don't tell me,” she sighed. “I guess I'll want to read it in the future and if I can't laugh about it anymore, then what's the point?”  
  
They exchanged a suffering gaze, then the Master put away the book and turned off the lights. She could feel the mattress shift as he laid down fully, her eyes still trying to get used to the sudden darkness.

“Still,” he muttered. “Better than Frozen.”

Without looking, the Doctor extended her arm to hit him, laughing quietly.

“That's not true, you _liked_ Frozen! I could tell!”

“I was trapped in a cage with you and nothing but Nardole and a lot of Chinese food to keep me company, of course I thought I had to pretend to like it.”

“Ohhh, don't be so dramatic, you big, fat liar,” she laughed, while he caught her arm when she was trying to land a second hit. “I know you liked Nardole, too!”

To her surprise, he didn't let go of her arm. He was running his fingers up and down the tender skin, suddenly making her shiver and only when her wristband showed a faint, greenish glow, she noticed that it was visible perfectly in the dark.

“He was fun to wind up,” he finally muttered. “But not half as much as you are.”

And with a sharp pull, he dragged the Doctor from her arm towards him, rolling over her so quickly, she hadn't even finished realising what was happening, when he was already caging her beneath him, kissing her hard.


	5. Chapter 5

Stunned, the Doctor reacted on pure instinct at first, raising a hand to intertwine her fingers with the soft, dark hair at the back of his head, reciprocating the kiss with passion. The Master was pressing down against her with all his weight and she could feel his erection brushing her thigh.

The Doctor blinked, once, twice, snapped out of it, considered whether she really wanted to snap out of it, then pushed the Master back gently.

He rolled his eyes, placed a last, hopeful kiss on her neck, – and it didn't leave the Doctor wanting more  _ at all  _ – then complied, rolling off her with a groan of annoyance.

“What the hell do you think you're doing?” She had attempted to sound firm, but her voice was betraying her by being shaky and weak.

“You,” the he growled and the Doctor couldn't help but giggle over the bad pun.

She regretted it immediately, catching the dark glare he was aiming at her, full of badly concealed hurt.

“Sorry, I'm not laughing at you,” she reassured him hastily, but he just continued to stare at her angrily. “It's just...”

“What?” he finally spit. “What exactly _is_ your problem, Doctor? You seemed to want me just fine two minutes ago. Tell me what reason we have not to do this?”

The Doctor looked down at her wristband, rolling it thoughtfully back and forth over her arm. It was glaring green now, and she thought hard on how to make him understand that this was the exact problem.

She wanted to be wanted, it was petty and childish, but she wanted him to want her, not out of boredom, out of lack of anything else to do, and sure as hell not to make a stupid bracelet glow in a certain colour for long enough.

She sighed heavily, rubbing her forehead to gain herself some extra time to think.

“I'm tired,” was all she finally said, before rolling off to the other side, turning her back to him. She could still feel the Master's stinging gaze at the back of her neck, making her skin tingle. She knew she should say more, explain better, say _anything_ other than “I'm tired”.

He had done nothing wrong.

But before she had found the words and courage to do so, she felt the mattress shift and the Master's soft, barefoot steps on the floor.

He shut the door behind him with a slam.

Things with Kristiane were.... awkward the next day.

Three times she had attempted to ask the Master a question, three times he had only sat on his chair, arms crossed before his chest, and demonstratively not looked at the Doctor.

Finally, Kristiane cleared her throat.

“So, there have been... reports of... progress. People have reported you kissing... Did something... uhm... else happen after that?”

The Master's eyebrows shot upwards and, for the first time that day, he turned his head towards Kristiane, facing her directly.

“Why don't you ask our neighbour?” he asked, voice coated in sugar. “I'm sure she'd love to report.”

“I'm sorry,” Kristiane replied, her voice just as sugary-sweet as his, and the Doctor distinctly realised that a war was about to break out. “Does open communication and honesty in a community offend you in any way?”

“You want to know what offends me?” he shouted back at her, all pretence of peace falling apart. The Doctor wondered if she should tell Kristiane to run. “People thinking they have any right to meddle with my private affairs, that's what offends me! This is my life, my husband, my marriage and who I kiss and how often we fight is none of your business! And stripping us of our freedom, locking us into this... this joke of a social experiment until we either do it like the bunnies or smash our heads in... what the _hell_ gives you the right?”

Kristiane looked confused. “Husband?”

“Yes,” the Master spit back, now panting after his outburst. “That's what you keep on insisting on, isn't it?”

She simply looked back at him, a puzzled expression on her face, and the Doctor considered whether or not she should tell him that the correct term in most gendered civilisations was “wife” now, but he was cute when he forgot about gender roles, so she simply grinned at Kristiane.

“Uhm,” their counsellor mumbled, trying to regain her composure, while giving them both slightly nervous side glances, as if waiting for someone to correct the situation at hand. Finally, she seemed to have given up on that. “Don't you think, Master, that you're projecting the anger you feel for your... uhm... spouse onto the situation? Fried'en has done nothing but enforce our laws, after all, as is our _right_.”

“Angry?” the Master asked, a deadly smile on his lips.

Now, the Doctor thought, now I should really warn her.

But she found she couldn't quite move her lips.

“But why would I be angry?” the Master added, his tone cold and dripping with sarcasm. “I've been chasing after her for millenniums, I'm used to her pushing me away at every given opportunity, don't worry. This far, it has always settled me a lot to simply burn a few planets to the grounds when that happened. Wonder which one I will choose now.... Hmmm....”

He faked an extremely thoughtful expression, for a second only, then shot Kristiane a look, which has brought death by its mere existence alone to people weaker than her.

She jumped up, the hands around her clipboard trembling slightly.

“I think I will leave you some time to cool off,” she explained, and the Doctor could see the urge to flee written all over her face. “You're clearly very affected by whatever has happened between you. Now. I will _not_ report this threat of open violence. This time. But you better watch your words and keep your temper under control.”

The Doctor had to hand it to her, she didn't only stand her ground to the Master, despite the very obvious panic she was now in, she also still found exactly the words to say to anger him even further – She would have thought that not telling a person who called himself “The Master” what to do was an obvious rule, but here she was, doing it anyway.

With a last nervous glance towards the Doctor, Kristiane strolled out of the door, leaving the Master standing in the middle of the living room, hands balled to fists and frozen in rage.

“You know,” she asked after a little while of utter silence, “that I'm considered a woman now by most people, right?”

When the Master returned from his shopping tour, for what he called “getting some fresh air and supplies for anger-cooking”, he came back in a very apparent better mood, whistling a happy little tune with two bags under his arms.

“Did you amuse yourself?” the Doctor asked, walking out of the kitchen with smudge on her cheek and flour in her hair.

The Master looked taken aback.

“Were you in the kitchen again?” he asked, a slight edge of panic in his voice. “You know I wasn't serious about wanting to burn this planet down? And if I was, I wouldn't want your help.”

She gave him a bashful smile.

“I tried to.. uhm... Oh well, I might as well show you, you're going to find out anyway.”

“Oh no, Doctor, why don't you stay out of...” He took a deep breath, bracing himself. “What did you do?”

She stepped back into the kitchen, coming out with a plate filled with... well, the Master couldn't help but call it a black, burned clump, covered with sugar-coating that spelled out the words “I'm sorry, Master”.

He sighed.

“That's... horrendous.” A little laugh escaped him against his will.

“I found a recipe in one of the books we got,” the Doctor replied, sulking slightly. “I must've gone wrong, somewhere.”

The Master nodded with his lips pressed together firmly, but he couldn't stop another laugh from slipping out.

“Somewhere,” he repeated dryly.

“Oh stop it,” she called out. “I did it for you, I was trying really hard.”

“It's fine,” he sighed, shaking his head as he entered the battlefield that had once been their kitchen and looked for a spot to safely drop his bags without them getting covered in sugar and flour. “Really, I'm over it already. Got the message. No sex. And a padlock for the kitchen. I'm not going to be the one cleaning this up, though. But I got some great new coats... and hats.... and glasses.”

He hummed happily as he showed them to her and she commented them with an adorable frown that made flour fall from her eyebrows and into her face.

“Not your usual style.”

“Well, no, that's rather the point,” he grinned. “Disguises! No one can report us if they don't know it's us!”

“Master...”

“We put on these glasses, our faces will be in the shadows, and there we go, ready to go back into public without being constantly stared at!”

“Master...”

“Just say I'm brilliant, come on, just this once, you know it's true!”

“Master,” the Doctor sighed, shaking her head with an exhausted little laugh. “We're the only people on this planet, who don't look like _ducks_.”

She could watch his smile fading off his face, until there was nothing but a completely flabbergasted expression left.

“Oh.”

They were lying in bed, their slightly shaky peace restored to at least make them comfortable enough to sleep side by side again. She was reading an extremely uninteresting book about two people falling in love and nothing bad ever happening to them, when she heard it the first time. A thin, quiet voice, so quiet in fact, she almost could tell herself she had imagined it, calling for help.

She side-glanced at the Master, checking if he had heard it too, but he seemed pretty caught up in his writing (he had gotten himself a laptop, and they had both already discussed how to best give it access to more media from other planets... they were going to attempt this project after breakfast tomorrow).

Just as she had decided it had been her imagination after all, leaning over to read what he had written down and gotten pushed away with a grin and a shake of his head, she heard it again.

The Doctor immediately froze and gave the Master another look, whose smile had become quite stiff all of a sudden.

“So uhm... want to watch a movie together?” he suggested, looking a tiny bit too eager.

“What did you do?” she asked, coldly, then shook her head. “Why am I even asking? Where _is_ she?”

“Who?” he asked, apparently trying to seem innocent and the Doctor let out an exasperated sigh.

“Our neighbour.”

“Oh... _her_.” The Master grinned, broadly, and pointed at his night stand. “Don't know why she's complaining, she's got it quite comfy in there. Made her a nice little bed out of tissues.... haha, get it? Tissues... tissue compression... no?”

The Doctor was already climbing over him, opening the door, where their neighbour was almost falling over, having hammered against the wood with both her tiny little fists, looking desperate.

“Hey look,” the Master announced happily, looking at his laptop again. “I got access to an Earth movie! You like Earth movies, right? This one's called, 'Honey, I shrunk the neighbour'.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please check out this extremely cool artwork inspired by this fic, it's gorgeous and might or might not have inspired some of the clothes choices going on in today's chapter. :')
> 
> https://the-patrex.tumblr.com/post/190886414354/the-duck-planet-forced-marriage-fanfic-owns

The Doctor didn't talk to him all day long, and instead started inspecting her wristband, slowly coming to terms with the fact that if they didn't break out, there simply was no way of them to ever get out of this. He had shrunk their neighbour, for heaven's sake!

If she just found a way to open and remove them, the force field couldn't keep them in anymore and they could reach their ships and just... disappear forever.

But when she tried to enter the kitchen, she had to stop abruptly, as she felt herself crashing against an invisible wall in the doorway.

The Doctor frowned darkly, already guessing what was going on and now seriously considering if it was worth breaking her silence over it.

Finally, with a sigh, the Doctor admitted defeat and walked into the bedroom, where the Master sat with a book on his lap, grinning up to her when she entered.

“Something you want?” he asked sweetly and the Doctor tried her hardest not to roll her eyes.

“Did you put a force field around the kitchen?”

With a badly suppressed snort, the Master looked down at his book again.

“It's for everyone's safety that you don't enter it, believe me,” he muttered casually.

The Doctor glared, got annoyed at not being noticed while she glared and pulled out the book from his hands to glare at him directly. He kept staring at the empty spot it had just been in, his hands still raised to hold the air.

“What?” he finally asked, sounding suddenly angry.

He really needed temper management training this time around.

“I'm trying to work on something to break the force field keeping us in here,” she explained, barely containing her own annoyance. “And you just threw another force field into my way.”

“Despite what past experiences might have suggested to you, the power of making an oven explode is not enough to break a force field,” the Master replied in a bored tone. “So why exactly do you have to be in a kitchen to do this?”

“I need to melt in our spoons.”

The Master finally looked up, raising an eyebrow.

“Seriously?”

“Well... yeah.”

They stared at each other silently for a few seconds.

“For a new sonic screwdriver,” she added helpfully.

"Aren't we going to need our spoons?” he asked. “I bought pudding.”

“Not if we escape.”

“Ah. Yes. Escape. With a sonic screwdriver.”

“It helped me escape from _you_ several times, if you remember.”

The Master smirked.

“Because I let you.”

“Sure,” she rolled her eyes this time, unable to hold back any longer. “Will you just... Open the kitchen, please?”

He pulled out his TCE, which was apparently now a multi-functional device and gave her an apologetic smile as he pressed a button.

“Only because you asked so nicely.”

She turned around on the spot and walked straight into the kitchen, opening the cutlery drawer curiously and then froze.

It was completely empty.

“I should've probably mentioned,” the Master's voice came from behind her, where he now stood in the door frame, wearing a bashful smile. “I already used all our cutlery for my TCE.”

As revenge, she decided to cook, just to freak him out. Nothing too complex, of course, since they didn't have anything to eat with anymore, so she put chicken nuggets and chips into the oven, sure that nothing could possibly go wrong. All she did, after all, was pre-heating the oven for ten minutes, put in the baking paper so it got all warm and cosy and then put in the food.

It was super easy.

At least that's what she had thought, before the smoke detector went off and the Master had ran into the kitchen, trying to extinguish her fire (apparently paper could catch fire when it wasn't covered and close to the walls of the oven. How could she have possibly known?). She pulled at the fire extinguisher, determined to prove she could very well do it without his help, but he refused to let go.

“Give. That. To. Me,” she hissed and pulled, but he pulled back harder, glaring.

“No! If you act like a little child, I'm going to treat you like one!”

“Don't be ridiculous, just give me the...”

And with a heap, he ripped the fire extinguisher from her hands and sprayed the foam into her face, before turning to the actual fire at hand, leaving her to rub her eyes as he smothered it.

As soon as the Doctor could see again, she grabbed the extinguisher and sprayed foam all over the Master's shirt. He growled, ripping it out of her hands again and returning the favour. Within seconds, both of them were completely covered in foam, smoke still rising out of the forgotten oven, and the once frozen food slightly dripping water to the floor as it warmed up. Their glaring red wristbands made it look as if the kitchen was on fire, still.

“I am not wearing that,” the Master insisted, staring indignantly at the shirt the Doctor was holding. In bolt letters, it spelled the word “Quack”.

There was still water dropping from his hair and beard and she quickly stifled a laugh.

“It's either that or your ruined shirt. Everything else is in laundry.”

He looked down at his bare chest, whole body trembling after the shower he had just taken, then grabbed it with a hiss.

“You better never, ever, _ever_ enter the bloody kitchen or I will hypnotise each and every last duck on this god forsaken planet to keep you hostage.”

He pulled it over and looked down at it with such an exaggerated horror on his face that the Doctor couldn't hold herself together any longer and broke out in loud, uncontrolled laughter.

“It... it suits you,” she snorted, wiping away tears of laughter. It was rare to see the Master anything less than perfectly styled and so it somehow just felt hilarious to her.

To her surprise, the Master grinned along. Surprise, that was, until he pulled out a shirt for her from behind his back, holding it up without a word.

She gulped and stared at the huge duck on the front. It was stitched onto the shirt, but the beak was hanging down from it, almost poking her in the chest now. It could even open and close like a real one.

He gave her a sickeningly sweet smile, before turning the shirt around, presenting her a bundle of feathers that apparently represented a duck's tail.

“Found that for you,” he finally announced and they managed to look into each other's eyes for exactly one second, before they burst out into a second fit of laughter.

“You need to unshrink her. She can't stay like this, they're going to notice she's gone. We'll get into trouble.

“Doctor, we're already in trouble,” the Master sighed, apparently very distracted by playing with the beak on the front of her shirt, making it do all kind of silly movements along with his words. “If I unshrink her, she'll tell them what happened and we're never getting off here.”

“Maybe, just maybe, you should've considered that before you shrank her, what do you reckon?” she groaned and he grinned, still only looking at the duck beak, making it open and close with her words, muttering “blah blah quack”.

“Master!” she pulled back, away from his hand, and he finally sat upright, looking her in the eyes.

“Well, I didn't consider it beforehand, did I?” he finally sighed. “Can't turn back time, at least not from here. We gotta keep her.”

“What, like a pet?” she asked, shaking her head in exasperation and the Master grinned.

“Always wanted to have a pet duck.”

That same evening, he carefully used his built-in laser setting on his TCE (she had to really hide that thing on the first possible opportunity) to detach the beak from her shirt. Half an hour later, she found him sitting on their bed, having cut open her (of course _hers_ ) pillow and taken all the feathers to create what looked like a huge duck mannequin. He had given it hands made out of socks and put a book into its lap, showing it proudly to the Doctor.

“We'll sit it down in front of her window,” he explained. “No one will notice she's gone. They'll just going to think she's really engrossed in the most boring book of the century!”

“No,” the Doctor called, absolutely mortified. “Master. No.”

But he wasn't even listening to her, humming gleefully, as he got up from the bed, feathers whirling all around him, and walked straight out of the house with his mannequin in his arms.

She stared at the mess on their bed, shaking her head, completely stunned.

“A maniac,” she muttered. “I am married to an absolute maniac.”

From the night stand next to her bed, she heard a muffled quack of agreement.

That night, she lay wide awake, her head too low, and the Master snoring unbothered next to her yet again.

It wasn't fair, she thought, that he kept on dragging her down into his mess, took away her pillow and then thought he could make it all up with some pancakes.

With a sudden surge of defiance, she started pulling at the cushion, deciding he owed her at least that. With a grunt, his head shifted down to her side, suddenly resting so close to hers that his breath met her cheek, leaving a chill on her skin, despite the warmth of it. The pillow was close enough for her to at least rest her head onto it too, and so she did, turning towards him as she did.

Their noses almost touched, his eye-lids fluttered gently but stayed close, and for a second, just a single one, for the first time since they had gotten into all this mess, the Doctor thought that married life wasn't all that bad.

Some part in her hearts came to life as she looked at him now, saw every pore in his skin, saw the way his nostrils fluttered with each breath and his long eyelashes rested against his cheeks. Some part she had thought long, long forgotten, that reminded her that this was exactly what she had once wanted. So many years ago, when they had stood so close to each other, different people, but feeling so connected and bonded that the thought of not spending their lives together felt nothing short of wrong.

He was absolutely insane, of course, but with a smirk, the Doctor couldn't help but think that everything else would be so incredibly boring.

The Master opened one eye.

“Are you going to stare at me all night?”

She flinched and gave him a sheepish smile, feeling quite caught.

“It's okay,” he grinned, opening his second eye too, now. “I realise I'm incredibly attractive.”

The Doctor rolled her eyes, but before she could answer, he had shifted closer, bridging the last bit of distance between them, and wrapped his arms around her. For a second she stiffened, then decided to simply relax, a little sigh escaping her as she let herself curl up in his arms, suddenly feeling very tired.

Within seconds, she had fallen asleep peacefully, not noticing the green shimmer lighting up the room around them, while the Master thoughtfully watched over her. 


	7. Chapter 7

It took the Friedianers two days to notice that they had replaced one of them with a feather mannequin.

They weren't thrilled.

“Listen,” the Doctor explained, while the Master stood in the back of the trial room, unhelpfully humming “Alfred is so merry”. “It was just a prank. She's completely fine, you see? He wanted to unshrink her immediately, but something went wrong...” She coughed, pulling out the little match box and presenting their shrunken neighbour on the palm of her hand. “See? Perfectly fine.”

The council, towering in tribunes high above her, looked down at her motionlessly.

“You see?” She nudged the tiny duck a little with her finger, so she would move. She quacked indignantly as she stumbled forwards on her hand. “Perfectly good condition.”

Still, no one was speaking.

The Master had reached the “But even if he's naughty, you'll find he's never, never, ever really bad” potion of the song, still humming the lyrics under his breath.

“We are going to... work on unshrinking her together and then she'll be back to.. to her normal size in no time and we can all laugh about this incident!” the Doctor explained, nodding eagerly, trying to encourage them to agree.

Some ducks shook their heads slightly, still staring down at her with cold eyes.

“Okay,” she finally sighed, turning very serious all of a sudden. “I told you he's insane. I _know_ he's insane. But if any of you so much as try to lay a finger on him to restrain him or lock him up or anything of the sort, i promise you, I will shrink every single person in this room personally.”

Several Friedianers started mumbling now, talking to each other in excitement and the Doctor took a deep breath, too concentrated on bracing herself to notice that the Master had stopped humming.

The judge and his advisor exchanged a few quacks, then turned back to her, head straightened as he addressed them both.

“You will both get away with a warning. Both of you, because you are married, and therefore count as a union on this planet.” He nodded towards the Doctor. “It seems you have acknowledged that. We won't be as merciful next time, so try and control your husband.”

She could basically feel the Master's angry glare poking into her back, knowing he was not liking the sound of that. But he would to have just take it, today. They had been incredibly lucky.

“Thank you,” she said earnestly, nodding nervously for a whole minute, before finally backing up, putting the match box back into her pocket quickly, then grabbing the Master's elbow and pulling him with her, doors falling shut behind them.

“That was close, you know?” she hissed as they walked in quick steps down the road back to their house. Where ever they crossed people, they stood to stare at them with open hostility. “It's a miracle we got away with this. You need to unshrink her as soon as we're home.”

“It's no miracle,” the Master replied tonelessly. “They want us to get along. You stuck up for me.”

The Doctor give him a thoughtful side glance.

“Noticed that, did you?”

He shrugged, not looking at her for the whole rest of the way.

Their neighbour, finally restored to full size, did not say a single word. Utterly struck silent, she gave both of them a death glare, walked straight out of the door and back into her home, with steps so fast, the only way she could be faster was if she'd be running.

The Doctor looked after her with a worried expression, but the Master simply shrugged.

“Well, that's that problem solved. She won't complain ever again.” He attempted his usual light tone, but the Doctor could tell that something was up.

“What's wrong?” she asked, unusual gentle.

“Just thinking,” he replied, giving her a dismissive wave. “Want something to drink on that shock?”

She laughed, rolling her eyes.

“Sure, why not. It can only lead to more of your great ideas.”

When the Master walked into the kitchen, which was locked with a force field yet again, she could see his eyes flinch to her wristband before he crossed the doorway. She raised her arm, looking at it with interest, as it glared in shrill green.

The Doctor let out a deep sigh.

This was beginning to get a little complicated.

They drank one and a half bottles of wine together, mixed with some glasses of champagne he had gotten out of the kitchen as a late night surprise. At this point, they were both babbling and giggling like school children drinking for the first time. It felt like they had gone back to their childhood, when they had sneaked out onto the balcony in Borusa's office and drank the whole bottle he had hidden in his drawer...

She was halfway about to remind him of that story, when she remembered how they had ended up naked on the balcony floor, him all over her, two clumsy boys getting to know each other for the first time.

The Doctor looked up and found that she did not need to say anything out loud. The look on his face when their eyes met was hard and filled with so much desire, it made her breath hitch.

He must have seen something in her eyes, too, because within seconds, he was pressing her down onto the sofa, hands left and right from her head as he kissed her deeply and oh, this felt right, this wasn't to prove something to anyone, this was just  _ them _ . With a sigh, she leaned up, parting her lips for him and she could feel one of his hands running down her body, sliding slowly underneath her shirt, stroking the hem of her trousers, before they finally slid in.

“O... oh,” she mumbled and a tiny little smirk appeared on his face, as he spread his hand, letting a finger brush against her clit just then.

“That's my name,” he breathed, making the Doctor giggle. He stiffened her laugh with another kiss. She tasted the alcohol on his lips and somehow it made everything even sweeter. His finger slowly, carefully, pushed in and the Doctor let out another low moan, arching her body towards him.

The Master grinned, his lips wandering further down, sloppy kisses being placed on the side of her neck as he added another finger. She pushed against his digits eagerly, impatiently and he chuckled lowly against her skin, living a trail of shivers as he went further down.

“Pl... please,” she brought out and got a soft bite into her shoulder as a reward. With visible concentration, the Master let his other hand wander down, pulling down her trousers and with quite some relief, the Doctor lifted herself off the couch just long enough to kick it off. 

Her hands shook slightly with need as she returned the favour, pulling at his ridiculous trousers with visible impatience. He looked at her, then, for a few seconds completely frozen above her, and there was so much love in his warm eyes, she had to swallow. He kissed her, deeply, before kicking off his pants and sinking into her with a deep moan, perfectly echoed by her.

He started off with shallow thrusts and she draped her arms around his neck, trying to pull him closer, deeper. He complied with passion, taking her in long, hard thrusts and the Doctor threw her head back into the pillows, completely losing herself in him.

“Ma... Master...”

He stilled looking down on her with his lips parted and eyes gleaming with lust.

“Say it again,” he breathed and the Doctor hearts ached, because it didn't sound like a command, but so, so much needed.

“Master,” she whispered, and, as he thrust deep inside of her, again. “Master.”

His mind broke open and love poured into hers, exploding in different corners like fireworks, and need, so much need, all buried beneath tons and tons of insecurity and fears. She pulled him close, kissing him as she opened her own mind to him, just enough for him to see that it was alright, that he wasn't the only one vulnerable right now, wasn't the only one afraid and lost and so, so in love.

They came in almost exactly the same moment, no one able to tell who pushed the other over the edge. They fell down onto the sofa like that, wrapped up in each other, the Master still inside her, and for a second, there was nothing but peaceful bliss.

Then, into the silence, the Master quietly mumbled, “She put the mannequin at the window.”

“What?”

The Doctor looked up lazily, and indeed, standing outside the window, looking in with cold, lifeless button-eyes, was the Master's makeshift duck mannequin.

She really just wanted to go to bed after this. Her head was aching from all the alcohol, her sight slightly dizzy, her body ready for a long, restful cuddle, but the Master was having none of it. He paced up and down the room, the mannequin now strategically placed on a chair before him, as if he was questioning it for a crime committed and he was thinking  _ hard _ .

Thankfully, he had put his trousers back on. 

“Don't,” the Doctor yawned tiredly. “Whatever you think is a good idea right now, don't do it. We don't need a war with our neighbour. We _just_ got away with the last stunt you pulled.”

The Master, very apparently, wasn't listening. Hands behind his back, he was still pacing up and down.

“Just a few more days,” she added pleadingly. “A few more days of peace and harmony and we can totally disappear from here. Look, they're almost consistently green now!”

She waved her wristband at his face, but he wasn't even noticing. He grabbed the mannequin with a sudden movement and a low growl, then raced out their entrance door.

The Doctor looked after him with a shake of her head, sighing heavily.

“I'm going to bed then,” she called after him into the night, grabbing her clothes (and his coat. For good measure. He apparently decided he didn't need it) before dragging herself into the bedroom, demonstratively lying down on his side of the bed.

“Wife,” he muttered as he finally came back in several hours later, looking drained and covered in feathers. He lifted her off the bed gently to put her down on her side, letting her pull his coat with her, as she was completely cuddled up into it.

“What?” she muttered sleepily as he lay down next to her, her eye-lids already fluttering shut again. His arm slid around her, pulling her a little closer.

A distant voice of reason knew she had to ask him what he  _ did,  _ but she had decided to tell that voice to fuck off and let future Doctor take care of it.

Yes. She had even properly cursed at it, that's how tired she was.

The Master yawned.

“I referred to you as my husband. Now I remember why she was confused. You're my wife.”

“Yeah,” she muttered, feeling herself drift away again. “Yeah, I am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you didn't know the song the Master was humming in the beginning...... it'll all make sense with this link. I hope. (it's kinda a culty thing in Germany. But I have an English person currently sitting next to me, looking like I'm an insane person, so my guess is.... issa German/dutch only thing lol)
> 
> https://youtu.be/QxIP9jbovTY?t=643


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This.... turned very angsty. I am not sure why or how, because it wasn't my attention, but I promise this story will be light again.

When she woke up the next morning, it was to the insistent ringing of their doorbell. The Master, still curled up around her, dark hair falling over his barely opened eyes, as he made grumpy sounds into her shoulder, threw a pillow against the window.

As response, the door bell rang yet again.

“Who is that?” the Doctor groaned, rolling out of bed reluctantly. Before she could get any further than a few steps, however, the Master was standing by her side, holding out her pants to her.

She gave him a crooked grin.

“Oops.”

Slipping in quickly, she followed him to the door, where Kristiane was waiting impatiently.

“Oh, it's you. Sorry,” the Doctor brought out, barely concealing a yawn. “We over-slept a little.”

“You had quite a busy night,” Kristiane replied coldly, making the Doctor stare at her in confusion, before she realised that they were still being monitored.

Right. Yes. They would know all about their night time activities, she supposed.

She grinned sheepishly.

“Yeah. Well. Yes. I don't suppose we can wrap this up and leave now, can we?”

Kristiane raised an eyebrow.

“Actually, the council is under the impression that your spouse requires anger management therapy before we let you leave.”

“He... what?” the Doctor sputtered, turning to the Master, who's mouth was opening in protest, but before any of them could say any more, Kristiane was stepping back from the door frame, pointing right into the direction of their neighbour's home.

The Doctor, suddenly remembering the amount of feathers the Master had returned home with, stepped out and looked around the corner with a sinking feeling in her stomach.

“Oh my... God,” she whispered, and Kristiane nodded dryly next to her. “Oh my... what did you do?” She turned towards the Master, grabbing him at his lapels, but he was simply grinning broadly.

“Revenge, Doctor.”

“Revenge? Revenge? What for! You shrank her, and then you... then you...”  
She waved her hands around desperately, trying hard to find words to express her horror, as her gaze returned to the scene of crime.

Dozens, God, dozens and dozens of duck mannequins, all positioned around their neighbour's house, staring in. Some of them holding props like binoculars, some making rude gestures, some covered in red paint, which undoubtedly represented blood. Some were placed on the house's roof, some looking into the upper stair windows, one was looking into the chimney even.

The Doctor shook her head in silent terror.

“What... what did you... what did you _make_ these of?”

“He broke into our shops and stole every cushion available.” Kristiane replied tonelessly.

“You...” The Doctor stared at it one more second, then turned back to the Master, who was still looking rather proud.

“She'll think twice about crossing me, next time.”

“Kristiane,” the Doctor brought out. “I'm... I'm very sorry about this. He will.... “ She gave the Master a dark side glare. “... fix this mess of course and it won't ever happen again.”

“I will not,” the Master threw in indignantly. “It took me all night to set this up, why would I take this down?”

Kristiane shot him a glare that was so cold, the Doctor suddenly felt unable to believe in the Friedianers' harmonious nature any longer.

“You will,” she promised. “Because the council has decided to not let either of you leave, until you no longer show signs of aggression and threat for the universe. I will be counselling you with additional anger management training to your marriage problems. We will begin tomorrow. After this is cleaned up. Have a good day.”

She left quite hurriedly, after that and the Doctor waited cautiously until Kristiane was out of sight, before turning towards the Master with hands trembling in suppressed rage.

“Why... just why... do you have to ruin everything with your petty little games?”

“Really, Doctor,” the Master grinned, his eyes sparkling with amusement. “And they say _I_ need anger management training.”

“All you had to do was behave for a few days. We had this fixed. A few days and we would've been free again. Don't you want to be free, Master?”

He shrugged, spreading out on the sofa, while she brought in mannequin after mannequin. Her anger rose with every single one she carried in, while the Master simply laid back, unwilling to move a muscle to fix the mess he had created.

Distantly, the Doctor was very aware that her methods weren't teaching him anything, simply making it easier for him to cause havoc, but what was she going to do? Leave these mannequins out there until they grew their own grey feathers while waiting to escape from this planet?

When she had finally carried in the last duck, dropping it to his feet with a dark expression on her face, he lazily rolled off the sofa, pulling a white feather out of her hair with a smug grin.

“Done?”

“As you can see,” she spit back.

“Nice. Let's have sex.”

She shoved him backwards, making him fall back onto the sofa, from where he looked up to her with wide eyes.

“Why?” she asked, her voice shaking with barely contained rage, while the wristband around her arm glared red. “Just why, Master, do you always have to ruin every single good thing that falls into your hands?”

She turned around before he could even answer, not wanting to see his stupid grin anymore, not wanting some smart ass response he thought was clever and funny. Right now, she could barely take him any longer.

When he finally came to bed, it was already deep night and she pretended to be asleep, quickly wiping away the tear trails on her face with her side of the blanket.

He was quiet when he dragged himself to the bed, simply crawling up to the pillow, not a sound leaving his lips, he didn't even go for the blanket. She waited for a while, for his breathing to even, then turned around curiously.

His face was pale, his lips quivered and his expression was tortured, even in his sleep. It didn't take long for him to start whimpering and thrashing around. She knew the signs, she had been there with him often enough, back in their childhood, when the darkness had slowly started to consume him and his dreams had gotten worse and worse. She had thought it'd be fixed, by now, because not a single nightmare seemed to have haunted him since they'd been stuck here, but here he was, looking just as tortured and lost as he had as a child.

She didn't think, she didn't even remember why she had been angry with him in this moment, she simply draped her arms around him like she had done back then and pulled him close to her hearts, trying to send him as much calm and love and hope, always hope, as his dreams could take without waking him up. After a while, he stilled, became calmer and his breathing slowed down again.

“You're such an idiot,” she whispered with a little sigh, gently letting her fingers run through his hair, stroking it out of his forehead. “Why do you always have to make it this hard for us?”

When Kristiane came in the next morning, there were dark circles around the Master's eyes and he sat on his chair with no sign of his earlier amusement or glee, despite them surrounded my dozens of duck mannequins.

“So,” she started their session, still sounding colder than she had been with them before... the incident. “We are going to talk about your anger issues today.”

The Master seemed barely able to hear her, his eyes glassily stared right through their counsellor.

“Sorry,” the Doctor sighed. “He had a rough night, it's not that he doesn't-”

“Stop speaking for me, will you?” the Master hissed. “I'm perfectly capable.”

Kristiane raised an eyebrow curiously. “You two are fighting again?”

The Doctor shrugged. “I wasn't exactly enthusiastic about his latest stunt, I can tell you that much.”

“She never is,” the Master threw in, his face now contorted in anger.

“Well, you never give me much reason to. Or do you honestly think...”

“It was a harmless prank!” he called, jumping off his chair. “No one got hurt!”

She jumped up herself now, tears glittering in her eyes. “A harmless prank that cost us our freedom!”

They were staring at each other, breath coming equally heavy, then the Master shook his head and she could see he was battling with his own tears just then.

“You want to get away from me that desperately, do you?”

“I... what?” she asked, but as usual, the Master was already turning to leave, banging the door shut behind him.

Baffled, the Doctor let herself fall back onto her chair.

Kristiane raised her eyebrow yet again, just for a second, then took some more notes.

“Why does he always... always have to think that everything is about him?” the Doctor asked, burying her face in her hands. “I spent my whole life out there, exploring the universe, never staying in one place, never stopping and he thinks... he thinks what, that I should just enjoy being trapped? That _he's_ the reason I want to leave?”

“As far as I can tell,” Kristiane sighed, “he's deeply insecure about your feelings towards him and can't handle it, so he channels his own insecurities into rage to regain the feeling of control and push away the very real threat of having something to lose. Have you... excuse the question, but... You _did_ leave him once, didn't you?”

The Doctor raised her head, looking stunned.

“I... I did. But not because I didn't... love him. You see what he's like. He's slowly turned into this person... obsessed with things I couldn't give him anymore. I let him down, I know that. He might have... might have still got it together, if I just had been there. But I ran. I know it's my fault, I just wish...”

She shook her head.

“Stupid thing to wish for a Time Lord, isn't it, to turn back time? Truth is, time doesn't work that way. If I went back to stop myself from leaving, the universe would implode.”

“He probably wouldn't mind,” Kristiane replied with a smirk and the Doctor let out a bitter little laugh.

“He'd probably celebrate me as a hero.”

“He loves you.”

The Doctor looked up, then shrugged weakly.

“I know. It's all he's ever done. He's a maniac and a murderer, but he's always there in my rear-view mirror, following me around wherever I go, and I think a part of me... liked it. It gives me security. He's gonna be there. Most loyal mass murderer I know.”

She gave a bitter smile, then quickly let it fall off her face.

“But I can't love him like that, can I? How can I run around, saving people and be in love with... with the monster?”

Kristiane smiled, real understanding gleaming in her eyes.

“Well, don't you?”

When the Master returned home later that day, it was very obvious that he had been drinking. His breath smelled of alcohol and his expression was numbed.

“Kristiane asked to tell you that for as long as you leave our sessions with doors banging, she considers anger management to be still failing,” she greeted him dryly, her face stuck in her book.

“Kristiane Schmistiane,” the Master muttered under his breath, as he let himself fall down the sofa next to her. “Who cares.”

“Well, you obviously don't,” she replied coldly, letting her book sink at last. “Is that your plan, then? Sabotaging our progress because you'd rather stay here, trapped with me and... _fuck_?”

The Master laughed for a whole minute about this and when he finally calmed down, he let out another shaky laugh following and fell back into it for another minute, before he finally spluttered out, “That word from your mouth just sounds _wrong_.”

“Will you please answer me? Am I ever going to be free again? I wasn't made for the domestic life, you know that. I miss it. All of it. The universe, the adventures, the predicaments, I need...”

“Oh, believe me, I know what you need,” the Master spit back. “And all about how you can't handle that this, for once, isn't about what _you_ need.”

“So that's a yes, then,” she sighed.

He rolled his eyes.

“Yes, know what, guess it is. And why the hell not. You've run away from me for all your life. It's time for you to face it. Face _me_. I'm going to bed,” he added, before getting up, stumbling over a duck still lying around and then quickly pretending it didn't happen.

The Doctor grimaced after him.

“Brush your teeth first.”

Like she cared. Like she cared where he went and what he did and where he slept. She wouldn't sleep next to him tonight, that was for sure. She would curl up here on the sofa, underneath her coat and simply freeze him until he decided there was absolutely no point in them staying here, together, until he realised that he might as well could decide to be married to a wall and then... then...

She heard him scream in his sleep, low, desperate, so _hopeless_ , and she sighed, grabbing a pillow to pull it over her face, cover her ears, but the next scream still got through.

It's not fair, she thought, it's not fair for him to do this now, now that she was that angry with him. It was almost as if he was doing it on purpose.

The Doctor sighed.

She waited, until he screamed a third time, just lying there, listening into the darkness, just to be sure, just to feel that sting in her hearts again, knowing she couldn't ignore him any longer, then sneaked into their bedroom, where he lay all stretched out on the bed, covered in sweat and still trembling.

She climbed up the mattress, pulling him onto her lap, and when his eyes fluttered open, there were tears caught in his eye lashes.

“It hurts, Doctor,” he whispered hoarsely. “It hurts. I spent my whole life thinking there was no hope for me but you had to come and lock me in that cage and... and... believe in me. It just made everything worse, you know? Failing you, it had never hurt that much.”

She held his face, a thumb stroking his cheek tenderly, as she looked down on him, shaking her head softly.

“Why would you ever think that, you bloody idiot.”

The Master smiled, then, and crossed with the pain in his eyes, it felt like the most heartbreaking smile she had ever seen.

“You're there to fight, everywhere there's hope. You're there to help everyone, save everyone. But you've given up on me.”

She didn't know what to say, so she simply held him as he wept himself back to sleep, held him when his dreams claimed him again, rocked him gently back and forth and when the morning came and sun fell through the windows of their bedroom, she was still holding him, still trying to find the right words to say to make it all better.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I felt genuinely bad to put so much angst into a fanfic that was intented to be light and fluffly, so I bring more light and fluffy today! Also, I feel the need to warn people that this fic is probably...... ending soon? I don't know. I realised it while writing yesterday and then was totally h̶e̶a̶r̶t̶b̶r̶o̶k̶e̶n̶ okay.

“I made you pancakes.”

The Master looked up, the sleepiness in his eyes quickly switching to terror and he jumped up, blanket falling off his body.

“No!”

His gaze fell to the tray in the Doctor's hands, where a plate with a few perfectly formed pancakes was waiting for him, and he fell silent, completely stunned, before letting himself fall back onto the bed.

“Wha.... but.... how.”

“Stole your TCE when you were asleep, deactivated the force field, made pancakes.”

“But... But... you... you can't make pancakes.”

She looked down on the plate.

“But I did.”

“But...” The Master shook his head, looking extremely puzzled.

Smiling widely, the Doctor stepped closer to sit down on the bed, lowering the tray down next to him. There were orange juice, plastic forks and knives and a nice little vase with flowers in it, decorated with some cleverly placed feathers, next to some slices of bread, syrup, pancakes and some bacon.

He looked down on the tray, up to her, then down again, clearly searching for words, his lower lip trembling, until he finally looked into her eyes again, his expression one of an innocent puppy. One could forget, for a second, that he was an evil super genius.

“That's... all for me?”

“Yeah, I already ate, I was up early. I might nick some bacon, though,” she smiled.

“Why did you... how did you...”

She sighed.

“Let's just say don't enter the kitchen until I finished cleaning up. I watched a lot of YouTube tutorials. But I just wanted....” She took a deep breath, bracing herself. “I just wanted to prove to you that no one is a lost cause.”

He stilled, then, in the middle of pouring syrup over his pancakes.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. See, I can learn to make pancakes, even though you surely thought it was helpless, so you can learn... whatever it is you want to learn, really. I realise I'm not the person to teach you to become... good. I wasn't a very good teacher, in case you didn't notice. But in combination with Kristiane and this peace loving planet of utter ridiculousness and... well, this idiot... “ She pointed to herself with both her thumbs. “We will be able to help you... become whoever you want to be.”

The Master considered that quietly for a while, chewing extra long on his pancakes to give himself time to think.

“You think that'll work?”

She shrugged. “I think you can be and do everything you set your mind to. You're utterly brilliant. It was, and always has been, simply a question of you choosing to want to do it.”

“I don't know if I... I don't know, Doctor.”

He looked down on his tray, apparently having trouble facing her. She let her head fall down onto his height, smiling affectionately as she caught his eyes.

“I won't abandon you. I promise. If that's really what you were scared of, here's me telling you, I won't. You're my husband. That was a promise I gave to you and I've run away from it for far too long.”

“Together then?” There was hope in his smile and the beauty of it made the Doctor's hearts skip a beat.

“Together,” she nodded.

“No matter what?” the Master pleaded and she nodded, hesitantly. “So if I told you that you almost certainly used too much salt for these...”

“No. Nonono. But I was so _careful_! I wanted it to be perfect, this was so important!”

The Master laughed, sitting up to kiss her forehead.

“It _is_ perfect, Doctor.” And to prove it to her, he shoved a whole pancake into his mouth, making her laugh.

He only looked a tiny little bit disgusted, too.

Cleaning the kitchen took longer than the Doctor had expected, and she had refused to let the Master help (not that he had offered), in order to not show him the mess she had made – Her symbolism worked better if he didn't know how many hopeless pancakes had to die, before she could finally offer him some (slightly salty) faith in form of breakfast.

When she came out of the kitchen, he was lying on the sofa, typing on his laptop. All around him at every window, the Master had positioned their countless duck mannequins. He had given some of them little binoculars, some of them were wearing caps, but all of them were staring outside with cold, relentless button eyes, crowding in front of the windows so densely, she could barely look out anymore. She noticed that they were all wearing little name tags around their necks.

With a sigh, she stepped around them, reading them with a shake of her head. The Master pretended not to watch her, but she could see his lips twitching whenever she turned to him.

“Is there any particular reason why all these ducks are named after my companions?”

The Master's eyebrows raised.

“Oh, are they? Well, I really just gave them the first names that came into my mind...”

“Ben and Polly,” she read, turning to a pair of ducks that was facing each other. “Really? You hadn't even met them.”

The Master smirked.

“That's what you think.”

She stepped around Rose and Leela, until she found what she was looking for, raised the duck called “Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart” and carried it towards the Master. With a little grin, she took the sock hand and shoved it into his face.

“Hey,” he spluttered, laughing when he caught sight of the name tag. “Stop that, once is more than enough.”

“What a punch that was,” she laughed, pushing the sock hand into the Master's face for only a bit longer, just for good measure. “All four of me watching had a great time that day.”

He narrowed his eyes at her in playful threatening.

“You just wait. I'll get my own people to pay you back.”

“Ohhh, who are you going to get,” she giggled. “All my friends are here. You've completely out-numbered yourself.”

“Oh I have, have I?” he laughed, putting aside his laptop carefully, before suddenly jumping at her, pushing her down into the sofa. The Doctor laughed.

“Noooo, Jamie, help, quick...-”

The Master kissed her, softly, hesitantly at first, and she wrapped his arms around his neck, pulling him closer immediately, sighing as he deepened the kiss.

“Never mind,” she whispered. “Stay where you are, Jamie.”

“I don't think he has a choice,” the Master replied dryly, making them both laugh.

People looked grumpy when they went out for a stroll that evening, walking through the village in desperate attempts of finding something they hadn't explored yet, a quiet corner somewhere in the wilderness, antiques that looked like a long buried city, maybe, similar to how human children dreamed of their first adventures when running through the very same small town, again and again, looking for new miracles.

All they found, however, was a bunch of ducks glaring at them, while massaging their necks demonstratively.

“You know,” she commented with an eye-roll, raising her voice slightly. “Do they all want us to assume they hadn't pillows at home and wanted to buy them _just_ as you stole them from the shops?”

“Ah, I wouldn't bother, Doctor,” the Master replied loudly as they walked by a particular angry looking man. “Can't really expect a species this violent to understand the concept of a harmless prank.”

“Excuse me?” the man next to them spluttered with an indignant quack, having come to an abrupt halt at the Master's words. “Did _you_ just call _us_ violent?”

The Master looked like Christmas had come early when he turned around to the man with a wide, amused grin.

“I believe I have, yes.”

The duck stared at him for a second, completely lost for words, but before he could find any, the Master had already continued.

“After all,” he grinned. “I believe the act of using other endemic creatures' feathers to sleep on, would, in every other civilisation, fall under cannibalism.”

His expression turned from indignation to horror quickly and without another word, the man was walking off, leaving behind two Time Lords who now broke out into open laughter.

“I can't be-... I can't believe you just did that,” the Doctor finally brought out with tears of laughter in her eyes. “How long were you waiting for the chance to put yourself on the moral high ground here?”

“Oh, Doctor,” the Master grinned. “You know me. Planned it from the very first second.”

They linked arms before walking back home and she couldn't help but feel completely at peace. It was alright, like this. They didn't belong, as they never did, and they had never needed to, for as long as they had each other.

When they came back home, all their ducks had changed their outfits, yet were standing in the same position. The Doctor looked around with her mouth wide open, stepping closer to the mannequins. Were they... Oh God.

That one was definitely wearing velvet and its shoulders were very even just as puffy as... And there was one in a dark little suit with yellow highlights, holding a daffodil.... And this one... This one was wearing a purple Victorian dress.

Completely in shock, the Doctor whirled around herself, finding one in an elaborate, long, red Gallifreyan robe and sunglasses, and not far from her (hadn't it been a few steps away from her just a minute ago?) was a very bald duck.

“Master... I... When.... _What_...?”

He suppressed a laugh, looking at her with the attempt of a serious expression, but his eyes were gleaming in silent amusement.

“Told you I'd get my friends here to beat yours up.”

“But... when... I... okay that's it, you couldn't have possibly had time to recreate all their outfits, we were out together! What have you done?”

But the Master just shook his head, grinning.

“A magician never reveals his secrets, Doctor. You should know that.”

“You're absolutely deranged,” she laughed and before he could even pretend to be offended, had pulled him into a long kiss.

It wasn't the ducks that had turned her on, naturally, it was his very apparent mix of insanity and genius (and also, well, he was bloody beautiful), but the Master didn't seem to want to listen to her. Try having sex with someone who constantly mocked you by quacking while taking you.

Still, somehow, they ended up entangled on the Master's remaining pillow, cuddling naked under their blanket, and she was sighing happily.

“It's not too bad, this married life,” she whispered against his neck and he grinned quietly, his grip around her hips tightening slightly, as if he was reminding her that he was never going to let her go again.

It was very fine by her.

“Could've had it far sooner.”

“I know. I know,” she sighed. “Maybe I was a tiny little bit terrified.”

“That's because you're a massive, huge idiot,” the Master offered helpfully.

She supposed she deserved that.

They were lying peacefully, for a while, simply enjoying their hands on each other, enjoying the closeness and she could hear his hearts beat, feeling somehow calmer by the sound alone.

“Oh, wait!” she called out, when she caught herself almost falling asleep. “I forgot something!”

With a little jump, she climbed out of the bed and tip-toed through the room naked, feeling the Master's eyes on her and grinned back at him, before leaving the room and returning shortly after, with the Missy duck in her arms.

“What...?” the Master asked, but then stopped himself when the answer became very apparent.

Clutching the mannequin close to her hearts, the Doctor snuggled up into his arms again, holding the Missy duck between them.

“She needs some love,” she explained, with eyes so wide and full of innocence, he simply kissed her forehead with a sigh and let it happen. There was no point in discussing it, anyway. They both knew she was right.


	10. Chapter 10

The next day, when Kristiane came for their next session, the Master pretended to be the poster child for innocence. Sitting there, on his chair, leg resting on his knee, a wide smile on his face, he seemed almost relaxed.

It worried the Doctor to no end.

Kristiane, meanwhile, remained utterly unimpressed by his act, partly because she was surrounded by duck mannequins, all in different mini versions of outfits the Doctor had once worn, and partly because she seemed to have decided to ignore the Master until he apologised to her.

Mostly, it was just a nice chat with some tea. Kristiane heard a few stories from the Doctor's trips, the Doctor asked about her children, and in the middle sat the Master, trying not to build up a temper while being ignored.

It did not work very long.

“Tell me,” he asked when Kristiane was just mid-sentence of a very cute story about her dog and cat getting along perfectly. “Since you're getting along so splendidly. Has she ever told you the story of how she blew up her own planet and then... just didn't?”

Kristiane simply raised an eyebrow and attempted to continue her story as if he hadn't talked, but the Master didn't give her any chance to.

“I once blew up a planet. Well, I say _once_... How many did I really blow up, what do you reckon, Doctor?”

She rolled her eyes.

“You wanted me to help you, remember?” she brought out through gritted teeth. “Do you really thing bringing this up right now is productive?”

His gaze flickered down to her wristband, which, to her endless annoyance, was still glaring in green.

“Don't think it changes much,” he smirked.

“Of course it doesn't,” the Doctor replied and a half-laugh escaped her before she could hold it back. “I know who you are. What you did. It has never, ever stopped me from loving you before, has it? I just wish, _God_ , every single day, I wish that it would.”

“Well... Loving you is annoying, too,” the Master replied keeping up his little, insufferable smirk. “You're all righteous, thinking you can stand above me, when you really have very dubious ideas of morality. _Boohoo_ , killing is bad, Master, but it's okay if my friends do it for me, _boohoo_.”

None of them noticed Kristiane had started taking notes.

“Yeah well, loving you is a bit more than just annoying, you know? _Boohoo_ , the Doctor looked at another person, I must immediately kill all of humanity to get their attention, _boohoo_.”

“Well, there's a simple solution then, isn't there?” the Master replied with a grin.

She raised her eyebrows.

“Just don't look at other people anymore.”

The Doctor stifled a laugh.

“Thank God, you're not one of those boyfriends that get really jealous and forbid me to have friends.”

The Master leaned forwards, looking into her eyes intently.

“Oh, I'm not your boyfriend at all, love. I'm your husband.”

The Doctor leaned forwards too, elbows on her knees as a relaxed little grin played around her lips.

“Yes, you are. And I promise you, I only look at other people platonically.”

He pressed his lips together, nodding dramatically.

“Even Rose Tyler?” he finally asked and she didn't, not even for a second, wonder about how he knew about this. It was just.... typical.

“She helped me through a rough time. And I did think you were dead, if you remember.”

“River Song.”

"Okay, listen, I didn't have much of a choice. When I met her, we were already...”

“Were already what, Doctor?” he asked sweetly and she rolled her eyes.

“Married. But it didn't even count. We didn't marry properly and I was technically still married with you. Wasn't even me she married, just a kind of... cyborg thingy that looked like me. With me inside.”

She threw a glance at Kristiane, who she had just remembered was there, and was now writing on her third page.

“It's a long story.”

She nodded, feigning understanding.

“Bill Potts.”

“Oh please,” the Doctor laughed dismissively. “She's a lesbian.”

The Master raised his eyebrows, looking her up and down just once.

“Oh,” she called out. “Right. Right. I always forget about that! You think she'd fancy me now?”

“I think everyone fancies you,” the Master growled. “You're far too.... _fancy-able._ ”

The Doctor and Kristiane shared an eye-roll.

“I'm not remotely fancy-able, you're just insecure.”

Kristiane wrote down something on her clipboard, that, had either of the Time Lords bothered to look, would've translated to them as “use the same made-up words”.

“Oh _please_ , you're completely fancy-able, you're just blind. Do you know how many of your pets were in love with you? No, of course not, you never even noticed, did you?”

“Course not,” the Doctor replied with a cheeky grin. “My husband told me not to look at them.”

He snorted, then shook his head in silent despair.

“You don't understand that it would hurt me,” he asked, serious now, she could hear it from the sudden way his voice got quieter, shakier. “Seeing you run off with them, seeing them falling head over heels for you, while you do all the things with them you... you said you'd do with me?”

Kristiane loudly ripped out the last page from her clipboard and got up, in desperate search for new paper. None of them were taking any notice of her.

“Well, you weren't exactly up to do any of them with me anymore, were you? Running around, trying to kill me, trying to take over the universe...”

“Screw the universe,” he sighed. “I don't care. I don't care anymore. It was fun, for a while, the thought of ruling it all, of control, because I needed it. I had lost everything else and I needed the universe to do what I wanted, so it wouldn't... wouldn't...”

“Hurt you anymore?” Kristiane offered, and he nodded, still not looking at her.

“Yeah. That. But I don't want it anymore, haven't wanted it in a while, I used it to... You know...”

“Get your attention,” Kristiane read from her third paper, then turned it around to use the backside for new notes.

Again, the Master nodded. “That.”

“You felt so far away,” the Doctor sighed. “It was fun at first, the games, something to do in my exile and it was always... good, seeing you, really. Until the games got serious and the stakes too high. Until you felt so shut off from me, I couldn't come to you anymore, you wouldn't hold me at night anymore. What... what was I supposed to do?”

The Master nodded, looking down, thoughtful, contemplating, and after a little while of silence, only interrupted by Kristiane's steady scribbling, he looked up again, smiling sheepishly.

“So, uhm... next time... flowers?”

The Doctor grinned.

“I take flowers over universal domination attempts any day. Maybe not yellow daffodils, though.”

With a laugh, the Master got up, taking her hand to pull her up with him, kissing her softly.

“Trauma?”

“You almost had me choke to death with a telephone cable.”

“That, dearest, was foreplay,” he grinned and she laughed.

Kristiane, desperately scrolling through several pages of paperwork, was trying to look for a place to write down “into BDSM”.

When she looked back up, both Time Lords had disappeared. She could only assume where to. With a sigh, she drank the rest of her now cold tea, got up, and simply led herself out.

She really needed a holiday.

“You know,” the Master muttered in between kisses, working his way up her body, kissing her breasts tenderly, before letting his fingers run over them, squeezing lightly. “I always thought it wouldn't be that bad. If you had just... admitted you weren't perfect. Just admitted you're not that far above me.”

The Doctor thought, between moans, that this was not the right time to discuss any of this, but she supposed it was rare he was talking about their issues at all, so she just accepted it as he wandered down, puffing air against her clit, grinning up at her devilishly.

Right now, she'd pretty much accept everything he wanted to do to her.

“Never thought I was perfect,” she breathed. “Far from it.”

“And you're not,” he agreed. “You can be colder and crueller than I have ever been.”

He kissed her thighs, so close to where she really wanted his mouth right now, and she moaned again, softly, seeing his grin building on his face.

“But you're perfect to me. Always have been. That's why I'm insecure. Not that... I wouldn't deny having said that outside of this room. Because I will.”

His tongue slipped between her legs now, right where it ached and she let out a stifled cry, arching her back, anything to just keep him there, her body trembling slightly as she felt the roughness of his tongue dragged out inside her, then over her clit, followed by a light suck.

“You are....” she brought out between choked moans, “the most infuriating... stubborn... most chaotic... perfect person I know.”

He looked up to her from down between her legs, dark lust glowing in his eyes.

“Tell me more, love.”

Then his head dove back down again, leaving her breathless.

“Well, you're... perfect in everything you do, you're...” she moaned, “bloody talented with your tongue, just by the way, and you... you...” She raised her hands, waving them around, desperately fishing for words with her head clouded by arousal like this. “You're clever, so much cleverer than me, and yes, I will absolutely deny to have ever admitted that, and if you'd just... Look at yourself... once just once, through my eyes...”

He looked up, climbing up her body, kissing her sloppily, desire burning in his eyes as she tasted herself on his lips.

“Show me, then.”

“Huh,” the Doctor grinned. “You know, why not?”

They closed their eyes, foreheads pressing against each other and the Doctor thought this was better than any orgasm could've been, this was her mind occupied with the one person that mattered, the one person that had, once, been in here daily. And she could feel him, his quickened heartbeats, his relief at feeling her, just as big as her own.

Then his fingers wandered down again, his head resting on the crook of her neck, and suddenly, with his finger pumping into her slowly but steadily, she thought that a tiny little orgasm wouldn't be too bad.

He caught her thought and chuckled quietly against her skin, leaving soft kisses and bites while she crammed inside her mind, bringing out all the little memories and dreams she had had about her husband.

There he was, still a child, eyes gleaming in excitement as he took her hand, off to another adventure he had brought right to the steps of their door.

She just had to show him, show him that this kid, her best friend, the love of her life, her husband and soulmate, had always been there, always been so apparent in all of his incarnations, had to just show him the spark in his eyes, the beauty in everything he did, the adventure in his voice, the absolute, utter... sexy... god, she was falling apart at his hands.

With a cry of his name, the Doctor came around his fingers, feeling sweaty and sticky, but he didn't seem too bothered, his lips on her neck still kissing and sucking, his fingers running up her body, up to her cheeks. When she turned her head, slowly coming back to reality, he was looking at her with so much love on his face, it almost took her breath away.

“That,” she whispered. “Can you see that?”

He nodded, kissing the tip of her nose.

“Saw it all, love. Don't worry. It'll be fine. It'll be fine now.”

He wrapped his arms around her, holding her, rocking her softly in his embrace and it was only five minutes later, when her mind slowly recovered and her sense of reality got restored, that she realised there were tears running down her cheeks.

It wasn't that she didn't like sleeping in his arms, she did. She slept better than she had slept in a long time, lying here with him, feeling his breath on her skin, hearing his hearts beating beneath her, feeling his soft hair tickling her neck, it was all she needed.

Well.

Almost.

Pacing up and down the corridor, trying her hardest not to wake him up, the Doctor realised she was becoming restless. She wasn't used to it, staying in one spot for so long. That sort of life had been in the past for so long, she could barely remember how she did it back then, on Gallifrey.

Then again, she had never truly done it, had she? She had grabbed the Master's hand and ran, through the grasses, through the dusty streets and fields, through the forests, over the mountains, everywhere, anywhere, just to see things, just to explore, just to move.

But she was stuck, in here, in the ever-same, never changing, never expanding house, where she had seen all the rooms, looked through all the windows out to the ever-same view.

God, she missed her TARDIS. She missed opening a door and unpredictably finding the swimming pool she had tossed out last year. She missed her humming right before the start of an adventure. She missed the music of the universe.

He was here with her. And it had made it bearable, until now. He was a walking adventure in itself, he was everything she loved about the cosmos united in one person, but God, she needed, craved to just grab his hand and run.

No, she was done. It had been an experiment, and it had failed. They needed to escape, and they needed it now.

With new purpose, the Doctor ran through their little home, ripped all the doors open, every cupboard, every shelf, every drawer, looking for something to help her break the force field. Finally, when she had sneaked back into the bedroom, still trying not to wake the Master up, for as long as he was snoring peacefully, she opened his side of the wardrobe and..... froze.

“You. Are. _Such_. A. Bloody. Bastard.”

The Master, waking up from the sound of her angry words, propped himself up on his elbows, looking up to her sleepily, before realising what was going on, a little grin stealing its way onto his face.

“Oh,” he laughed. “Yeah. Sorry. Did I forget to mention that my TARDIS was... always _within_ the force field?”

She wasn't talking to him all day long. It didn't stop her, of course, to silently pack up the little stuff she wanted to take (mannequin Missy) and take it into his TARDIS, which he had moved from out of the wardrobe into he living room now.

She had just finished positioning all the other mannequins towards the entrance, into a waving position, one of them holding a thank you/apology letter to Kristiane, which the Master had reluctantly signed with his name on, when he finally stepped out of his TARDIS.

“Traced your TARDIS on the outskirts, so we can pick it up before we leave. We're... still leaving together, right?”

“We are,” she replied shortly.

With a little grin, the Master stepped up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist.

“Come on,” he murmured into her ear. “Just admit the time here was _good_ for us.”

“Oh, I know several things that might be good for you, a slap in the face is on the very top of the list,” she growled, but he just gave her another playful grin, nibbling at her ear gently before letting her go again.

“It's all ready for take-off, Milady.”

He bowed playfully before her, winking at the grumpy expression on her face.

“I assume, it was all ready for take-off two weeks ago?”

“Naturally,” the Master replied, a laugh escaping his mask of utter innocence. “Everything but you. I got a high-precision laser inside to get rid of these things,” he waved his wrist in front of her face. “And then we're good to go.”

He offered his hand to her, wiggling his fingers and she took it with a heavy sigh, her green wristbands clashing against his.

“Exactly how many lasers do you have on your TARDIS?” she asked and the Master grinned.

“Around seventy-two. Seventy-three, now that I take my new TCE.”

“Great. That's settled then. Soon as we have it back, we'll be living in _my_ TARDIS.”

To her relief, the Master looked far too smitten with the idea of them living in one TARDIS to even disagree.

She gave him a little kiss to the temple.

“Any idea where to go to first?”

“Earth,” came the immediate response, and the Doctor gave him a surprised glance.

The Master shrugged.

“Gotta stop a pre-planned assassination attempt on a certain Professor River Song.”

“Of course you do,” the Doctor replied with a shake of her head.

“Maybe we should bring one of the Doctor mannequins for her,” the Master grinned. “To remember you by.”

“You're an idiot,” the Doctor replied with a resigned nod. “You really, really are. Lucky for me, you're definitely _my_ idiot.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so so much for everyone reading along, leaving kudos and comments. I never had a story blow up as much as this one did and it was loads of fun. :) I'm gonna miss it to bits, but I think it's best to end it here, rather than dragging it out. Much much love to y'all x


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